Monday, December 16, 2013

SACRED HEART CHURCH CELEBRATES THE FEAST OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

By Raymond Vara, Jr.

VON ORMY— On December 12, 2013, Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, in Von Ormy celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.The event conceded of a play and a mass.

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe), also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe), is a title of the Virgin Mary associated with a celebrated pictorial image housed in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of a young girl at the Hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City.Speaking to him in Nahuatl, the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honor; from her words, Juan Diego recognized the girl as the Virgin Mary.Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumarraga, who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the “lady” for a miraculous sign to prove her identity.The first sign was the Virgin healing Juan’s uncle.The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill.Although December was very late in the growing season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop.The Virgin arranged these in his peasant cloak or tilma.When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumarraga on December 12, the flowers fell on the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Our Lady of Guadalupeis the patron saint of North America and is celebrated by Catholics across the United States, Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean.